Are you superstitious?
Once, when I was around 7 years old, I woke up in the middle of the night to see my sister crouching, hugging her knees, and shaking in fear on the opposite corner of our bed. When we made eye contact, she pointed at the window. I looked and saw a black figure floating outside of the window. It was staring at us with eyes that gleamed with a color that I cannot remember. Our room was two stories up, and the neighboring house was a one story building. I told my sister to go back to sleep. In the morning, there was only a sky, some clouds, and the far away buildings outside of our window.
In Haitian Culture, if something that is unable to be explained by science or local logic happens, we tend to blame the supernatural: “Lougawou” (demonic, flying, werewolf, monster, thing), “Bòkò” (Voodoo priest), “Djab” (monster). A lot of Haitians—even myself, at times—tend to joke about that aspect of our culture and ridicule it, but I’ve seen a horse casually walking without a head. Everyone on the block stared at it silently. No one said anything. We never spoke about it. The headless horse just went about its way.
In 2014, I was laying on a hospital bed in New York City with half of my body paralyzed—I had recently woken up from a coma. A nurse walked in and started checking my vital signs—as they normally do. What was bizarre about the nurse’s visit is that she didn’t care to ask any questions about how I was feeling—as they normally do. Even more surprisingly, she looked exactly like my aunt Lenzy—who is a nurse as well. But Lenzy lives many state borders away. A few things about that nurse also distinguished her from my aunt. That nurse wasn’t my aunt. I didn’t know who she was, but I recognized her. The shock kept me from saying anything to the nurse. When she was done checking, she walked out silently. As soon as the nurse left, I turned my head to my other aunt, Thalsa, who was sitting in the room by the window. Knowing I had a witness, I shouted, “OMG! Aunty Lenzy just walked in here—didn’t you see her?” She responded, “what? Lenzy lives in California. Are you okay?” I was recovering from a Traumatic Brain Injury, so her question was both funny and cute. I pointed out, “but what about the nurse that just came in here?” With absoluteness in her voice, she said that nobody came in the room. The conversation ended there. A few weeks later, aunty Thalsa brought up the “nurse who looks like Lenzy” once again, asking me to describe her. When I was done with my description, her mouth was opened with tears slowly trickling down her eyes. She said I just described my mother. I haven’t seen my mother since I was one years old, when she passed. A few years after that event, I learned that my mother was also a nurse.
I’m 25 years old, now, and my mother’s death is a mystery that not even medical science could explain.
When I was in high school, my neighbor’s son passed. One Saturday morning shortly after his passing, I was in my living room doing homework when I slightly dozed off (although it didn’t feel like it). I turned my head to the left and saw a bright light entering the living room. He walked in with his contagious smile, and waved at me without saying anything. Shocked and at loss for words, I turned my head back towards the computer in front of me. I must’ve woken up while turning my head, but when I looked again, he was gone. My aunt and my uncle were also in the living room reading, watching television. When I told them what just happened, they didn’t see any of it—but they wasted no time in running to my neighbor to let her know that her son made it to heaven.
I’ve had dreams of people I’ve never met before, until I did. Events that were dreams or random flashes in my imagination, but I stood there questioning the familiarity and possibility of it all as these events unfolded in front of my eyes.
Have you ever interacted with someone but, some time after the interaction, a realization hit you that that was not an interaction with a human?
I believe aliens are real, but why show themselves to us if we’re still struggling to understand and know the very planet that we live on?
No, I’m not superstitious. From personal experiences, I’ve learned that the supernatural is real—just beings at a level beyond what we allow ourselves to perceive and understand. I have made peace with that; I’m not obsessive about it.
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